


Bellerophon

by knaveofmogadore



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Dread, Five Stages of Grief, Grief/Mourning, Oneshot, au where michael has precognition, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25682980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knaveofmogadore/pseuds/knaveofmogadore
Summary: We know very little about Michael's character, but it is canon that some Apollo kids have a form of precognition. This is Michael's last day (or part of it) based on the idea that he knew he was going to die.It's tagged as character death but no deaths will actually be described. This may end up being in more than two parts.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	Bellerophon

**Author's Note:**

> the first fic I finish for this fandom in four years and it is OF COURSE Michael Yew. I put this one down a long time ago because I didn't have the ability to do this idea justice but now I at least don't care if I don't whether I do or not. I also dropped a valdew fic to write this.

He snaps awake and launches into a sitting position. His chest is heaving but it feels like breathing through mud. The taste of river water coats his tongue. Flashes, passing visions from the last of his dream pass whenever he blinks. A boat on fire. A bridge twisting in the middle. The flash of a knife. Water rushing over his feet. Michael slides his journal out from under his pillow out of habit, the knowing that every vision and bad feeling is important. When his pen touches paper he realizes that there's no point. It's the same dream he's been having for months, there's no need to write it down for the fifth time. He slides out of bed with his notebook clutched in his off hand. It's leather, one of several that were gifts from his grandparents in a time when it was harder for them to just talk. 

It's at least an hour before sunrise. The rest of Michael's cabin is still asleep. Rows of his siblings tucked quietly into bunks. If any of them had heard him wake up, they left him to his own nightmares. He'll let them have whatever restful sleep they have left before the sun rises. There's a big day ahead of them. He slips on his boots at the door and goes for a walk. 

Michael isn't the only demigod awake. In the distance he can hear the shift change between the Demeter and Aphrodite cabins for guard duty. He imagines Drew being dragged out of bed with her facemask still on and almost smiles. He'd kill to have seen it just once. 

The Ares cabin is still quiet, but it won't be for much longer. Clarisse wasn't lying when she said her cabin wouldn't be fighting, but they had still been doing their morning exercises every day at six. Michael will come back later, before breakfast. Someone is working in the forges, filling the misty morning air with the rhythmic sound of iron on bronze. Someone grieving too much to sleep. The amphitheatre has a few demigods cramming in last minute training, and the dining pavilion has a few early morning risers with grey eyes and loud voices. 

He makes the short trek out to the dock. Even here, even alone, the energy of camp is oppressive. Everyone has been balanced on a razor's edge since dinner last night, when the reality of what was upon them finally sunk in. Michael sits with his legs dangling over the water, the toes of his boots skimming the surface. It looks for a moment like a roaring river, steaming and churning and angry, a force barely controlled as it sweeps over everything in its path. The next it's just the lake. The same lake he grew up beside, the same lake he learned to swim in, the same lake Clarisse has tossed him into over twenty times. 

When Leo died Michael refused to let anyone else help him clean out his bunk. He sent them off marching to whatever activity, he doesn't remember what it was. He remembers finding letters. Lee wrote dozens of letters. For his mom, his boyfriend, Michael, their siblings, Chiron, their dad. All of his love and goodbyes, his final thoughts wrapped up into a stack of envelopes with craft twine and stamps. He had screamed, cried, and paced the cabin cursing Apollo with all the rage he had in him. And then once he'd burned himself out he sat there, on Lee's bed next to a barely filled box that contained his brother's entire life at camp. And he stared down at the paper with his name on it in Lee's illegible scrawl and he resolved himself to never write his own letters. 

Michael swore to scream and fight against his fate. He was resolute that he would spit curses and bare his teeth like a feral cat against the god's designs. He never had the patience or softness that Lee had. When his brother's letter to Apollo burned on the altar so did Michael's, one that was far less forgiving. Being a plaything of gods is never in any demigod's plans. But none of it ever matters. 

Not everyone can be Bellepheron, riding up to Mount Olymous on his flying steed to give them a piece of his mind for tossing him aside. He pens a letter to his grandparents in shaky simple Chinese. 

Not everyone gets to be Luke, bleeding his pain over the earth and into people, hoping that it will get him something. He pens letters to his siblings, to Will, in even shakier English. He shakes out his hand and scrubs at his eyes with an irritated sigh. A page that had gotten wet gets tossed into the lake and he writes it again. 

Not everyone gets to sit on the sidelines and decide that fighting isn't worth it. Some people just can't put down their burdens at all. He scribbles a letter to Clarisse, and all the other friends he grew up with. Some of them aren't around to read them anymore, but it settles his nerves to talk to them. 

Michael won't be marching dutifully silent to his demise like Lee. He doesn't have the easy going energy to skip straight to acceptance. He's up and walking before his brain catches up to his impulse, and he's walked all the way back to the circle of cabins before he truly knew what he wanted to say. There's still piss and vinegar boiling in his veins when he pounds on the door of the Ares cabin and tells Clarisse to get her ass out of bed. 

She's in a pair of sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt, with her sleeping knife still strapped to her arm. She leans against the doorway and folds her arms and waits for him to say his piece. One last attempt.

"The chariot's yours, you know. You can have it since it matters so much to you." 

Clarisse snorts, "Are you seriously bribing me right now?"

The entire right side of Michael's face twitched. "Bribing?  
Clary you can't still be serious about this." 

But she is, he can see it in the way her eyes flash. 

Clarisse bares her teeth, "We're not fighting." 

"We need you out there!"

Clarisse throws her head back laughs. Disgust is dripping from her every word, "Need me? You didn't need us when you were insulting our honour and treating us like greedy pigs!" 

Something inside of Michael cracks, audibly and visibly behind his eyes. "Fuck your honour. While you're sitting on your ass like a coward people are going to be dying out there! Our friends are going to be dying out there, don't you give a shit at all?" 

Clarisse's voice drops low and dangerous, "Excuse me?" 

"You're no better than your dad, chasing the glory and then running away when it actually counts! Acting tough until someone bruises your delicate ego and you crawl away like a worm!" 

They had been friends for seven years. Seven years of competitions and bruises and inside jokes and long school years spent in empty cabins. Their friendship was a delicate balance of knowing when it was ok to push and off limits to cross the line. In the last few months it had been crumbling, and now Michael had just pissed on the line for good measure. 

"Listen here you piece of shit." 

It's the worst fight they have ever had. Worse than the fight over the chariot. Worse than any of the time they'd both lost teeth. Her siblings skirt around them and refuse to look as they screamed in each other's faces. In the aftermath the silence is deafening and heavy. Years worth of frustrations were hanging in the air between them. It's the last time they will ever speak.

The rest of the morning is a blur. Michael set his notebook on his bunk when he returned to his cabin and then didn't have a single second to himself after. It was packing his siblings up, doing arrow inventory, and triple checking their stocks of supplies and what they could afford to leave behind. By the time he had herded his siblings to where they were supposed to be and settled onto the bus he has almost forgotten about his argument with Clarisse. Almost. When Annabeth starts spreading out maps and asks if she decided to come after all Michael can only shake his head and bite the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming.

**Author's Note:**

> The only trope I love as much as friends who argue constantly are ex friends who don't know how to fix it


End file.
